Thoughts on assassins...

[I_damian]

Playing a Pahlava game on hard/medium. Conquered lots of Seleukid land (everything north and east of Persepolis) in a fairly short time... mostly because the Seleukid armies are way in the west fighting the Ptolemies.

However, dem assassins... they're almost as annoying as the horrendous agent spam in Rome 2! I'm getting a family member assassinated every turn and I know it's a lone Seleukid assassin doing it because I can see the bugger running around. He's done 3 faction leaders and a faction heir. The Arsacid line is dead. He killed both brothers and their two sons (another son died fighting in the streets of Hekatompylos).

Would it affect any of the scripting if I switched them off? I wouldn't mind if just one or even two family members had been murdered, but 4 family members in 5 turns? No... that's cheating. Dirty cheaty AI!

[V.T. Marvin]

To disable assassins is actually very easy: open export_descr_buildings.txt, search for "agent assassin" and type semicolon ";" before that in each line that has it. In total there are 6 such lines.
Example:

;agent assassin  0

[Prosperin]

The correct solution would be to leave spies in your cities, they can see the assassin and I believe also will eventually make a spy network which will counter such actions. Spies cost a considerable amount per turn, so I would only use it in the highly necessary cities, where you have well groomed generals vacationing.

[QuintusSertorius]

Changes to the EDB aren't savegame compatible, are they?

Spies aren't expensive, they're only 100mnai a month or so, not even the cheapest levy unit costs so little.

[Thoras]

Depends on the faction income for some 400 or 500 mnai a month less can be annoying.

[MIKE GOLF]

You can hire your own assassin as well, they are pretty effective at removing rival spys and assassins.

[Prosperin]

Changes to the EDB aren't savegame compatible, are they?

Spies aren't expensive, they're only 100mnai a month or so, not even the cheapest levy unit costs so little.

Hmm, for some reason I thought they cost about 1350 a turn. Dont mind me. So yeah. Spies.

That said, lets have a talk about assassins while we're at it. Theyre good at taking out other agents, but outside of keeping the undesirables out, what is their role? Surround a settlement with them and then take down all the possible sabotagable buildings to see about forcing a revolt?

[Shadowwalker]

Hmm, for some reason I thought they cost about 1350 a turn. Dont mind me. So yeah. Spies.

That said, lets have a talk about assassins while we're at it. Theyre good at taking out other agents, but outside of keeping the undesirables out, what is their role? Surround a settlement with them and then take down all the possible sabotagable buildings to see about forcing a revolt?

The various agents seem to have a more (mainly) defensive role in EB 2.01 (compared to Vanilla or other mods).

Spies are of course useful as mobile watchtowers, but they aren't much effective at infiltrating settlements. Their chance to be successful is simply too low.
But they are a good addition to the armies you send out, to raise you chances of detecting hidden armies in woods (and thereby preventing ambushes).
And they should be assigned to every border town to prevent the AI stirring unrest in these towns (oddly enough the AI spies seem to be more effective than your own when it comes to infiltrating).

Assassins shouldn't be used to assassinate other characters but - similar to the spies - be assigned to your armies and border towns to prevent assassinations.

There's another reason for not using these agents offensively: assassinating, infiltrating settlements etc seems to lower your reputation rather significantly. And since a good reputation is one of the most important goals to achieve in EB ....

(I would gladly read a hint or two about what influences reputation, by the way. The way this system works is still more or less a mystery to me. I have some ideas what may lower it - the way you treat conquered settlements, the # of treaties you break (forced or not) - but the files seem to hint that there are only ever ways to lower your reputation more or less drastically, dependent on your actions. I don't see anything that makes it rise. )

[Prosperin]

One of the best ways to show your largess to other factions to keep them happy and not clammoring to steal your riches is to give them a little stipend of regular tribute. I find that amounts lower then 5 years don't seem to effect it, or amounts less then 300-500 a turn.

Are assassins the ones that stop assassinations? Spies merely detect other spies within a city?

Also, you have to be careful in what you use your agents for, I just learned of the agent limit in my game as epiros. I could only have about 7 spies, one assassin and one diplomat.

What's the use of diplomats really other then carrying tribute to neighbors? You can sit them in a settlement as an ambassador, but what does that really do for you? Is it perhaps for a big empires use later on when corruption and loyalty problems are of concern for other diplomats to be able to bribe your people?

[Shadowwalker]

Never experienced tributes to raise your reputation, will try that, thanks.

I strongly believe that assassins raise personal and public security, but I'm not entirely sure. Maybe I should have a look into the traits file to search for any hidden traits for the assassins and spies to confirm my assumption.

The limit for your agents is at max 1/settlement, but the market level is playing a huge role, too. Just have a look at the market descriptions. The lowest market levels grant only spies, then later assassins and eventually diplomats become available. But as siad - only one per agent type and settlement. There's no way to raise this (unless you edit the EDB).

And diplomats are very useful even without planning to negotiate with other factiuons. Assigned to an army they raise the bribe resistance (and therefore the amount of money needed to bribe that army). Same goes for settlements. And since certain factions are becoming rather rich later in the game it is not too rare to see bribe attempts by the AI...